Bill "No-Spin Zone" O'Reilly couldn't imagine anything more pathetic

2008-04-08T15:29:46Z

...when it comes to enforcing True Patriot Love in All Thy Sons Command, let alone "fostering a healthy respect" for "the nobility of America," than urging Congress to pass legislation modelled on Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code.

The which, in its entire, provides thusly:

1. Public denigration of Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years.
2. Public denigration of the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security structures shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and two years.
3. In cases where denigration of Turkishness is committed by a Turkish citizen in another country the punishment shall be increased by one third.
4. Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.

No wonder such specimens of Zealotry and True Belief are destitute of judgement, let alone having McCarthyist mindsets equating enforced patriotism with Americanism.

What "nobility of America"? Is it really code for force-fed fanaticism?

2008-01-12T20:45:44Z

From The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News, 24 October 2007, as transcribed by Media Matters for America (with emphasis supplied):

I've been out of the classroom now for more than 30 years, so I could be wrong.
But it seems to me, and the studies indicate, that most teachers--high school and college in the United States-- are left-wingers. That they bring in a anti-American viewpoint to the sense that they don't preach about the nobility of America, they teach about the deficits.
Now, I think you have to teach both. OK, you don't have to--you can't whitewash, OK? But when the balance goes to, it's a bad country--and there's no question that's going on in the university system. I don't know about high school, but I suspect it is as well. Then the kid gets an attitude like, you're -- he says something to you, "What have you done for me? You know, look at this. Look at Bush."
And the kids who are loyal and try to be patriotic are geeks--are considered geeks because of it.

Which begs the question of what exactly constitutes "the nobility of America" that the Bill O'Reilly crowd wants promoted in the schools--howbeit in much the same vein, methinks, as the "political instruction" common in the then-Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact/COMECON satellites in the Cold War's salad days, presided over by the staff zampolit (political officer) in practically every workplace, every military base, every residential block even.

Too, you also have the danger of such being no better than sugar-coated fanaticism of the kind commonplace in Nazi Germany (witness the "racial studies" classes common in the educational syllabus of the time) and even apartheid South Africa (where apartheid was seen as one with Christian Honour and National, not to mention Racial, Identity).

As in nothing more than drills for shouting out cheap bromides in bumper-sticker-slogan form @ mass rallies.

Exercises in obnoxious jingoism, replete with mandatory doublethink.

Even appeals to the most dangerous of prejudices in the guise of "patriot love."

Sadly, America is NOT the world, or vice versa.

And since when did it become necessary that the high-school syllabus had to include "political instruction" as could be biased towards a conservative Weltanschauung based on fanaticism, mob rule and Extreme Ultraviolence where the State's name and authority could be invoked if and when necessary?

enforced patriotism at Brave New Films

Bill "No-Spin Zone" O'Reilly couldn't imagine anything more pathetic

What "nobility of America"? Is it really code for force-fed fanaticism?